^H75 



.5'/ 





HE scenes of great events 
are common property 
of mankind. There is 
^ a subtle ownership of 
the soul covering all the tracts of 
glory that dot the rugged earth. 
This vast estate of the mind can 
not be vended away from us by 
the mere owners of lands. With an 
unbroken chain of title, we possess 
all the places which Fame has 
touched, from the Hill of Calvary 
to the Argonne Forest; to have 
and to hold forever. 

And so it is that we possess 
the sacred places upon which rests 
this wondrous story. 

The battle-scarred city of Cor- 
inth, the beautiful woods of Shiloh, 
and the road that lies between 
them belong to all the world. 
Never again will the soft shadows 
of seclusion rest upon them, for 
the spot-light of history will cast 
upon them an eternal ray. 



THE STORY 
OF SHILOH 



By DeLong Rice 

Super inlendent, Shiloh National Military Park 






Copyrighted 1919 by DeLong Rice 



^K 22 /3/9 



iGl.A561773 



DEDICATION 

^|fHIS humble commentary is 
^^ dedicated to the valor of a 
hundred thousand Americans who 
fought in the great battle of Shiloh 
— ^to the memory of all the dead — 
to the spirit of reunion and good 
will between the living — to the 
eternal brotherhood of the sections, 
that our country may ever be, as 
it now is, the most potent unit in this 
world for humanity, justice and 
libetty. 

—The Author. 



w 



Xt must ever be that battlefields where God- 
^ fearing men fear not to die will be sacred 
ground. 

As I have walked through these far-famed 
woods and fields, I have often thought of how 
long they might have escaped the notice, and of 
how surely they would have missed the homage 
of the distant hurrying world had not the battle 
of Shiloh sounded in the ears of history. Now, 
these quiet places are the student's problem, the 
patriot's shrine, the poet's theme. Valor has 
drawn this wilderness into the libraries of the 
earth, clothed this isolated spot with immor- 
tality, and lifted it far above the plane of mere 
places and objects of nature. 

Shiloh was the first great battle of the Civil 
War; it was the first great battle of this conti- 
nent, within the view of history. More Ameri- 
cans perished here in two days than were killed 
in all the years of the Revolutionary War. 

The first Red Cross tent field hospital ever 
set up on a battlefield was set up on the field 
of Shiloh. 

This was the only great battle of that de- 
structive war on whose field there was not a 
breastwork, nor a trench, nor even a rifle pit. 
It was the closest and fiercest death grapple of 
the American manhood of that unhappy time. 

Shiloh closed the wonderful life of Albert 
Sidney Johnston, and opened the great career of 
Ulysses S. Grant. 

These startling facts are my excuse for this 
brief volume. 

— The Author. 




TABLET MARKING THE SPOT ON SHILOH BATTLE FIELD WHERE 
THE FIRST TENT FIELD HOSPITAL WAS ESTABLISHED 




THE STORY OF SHILOH 

ICTOR HUGO has sung 
to all the future, a sad 
and wondrous song of 
Waterloo. Under the 
spell of his descriptive genius we 
see a little cloud, recruiting from 
the mists of heaven, double-quick 
across the Belgian sky, outmarch 
the ''Grand Army" and spread 
mud and mire across the pathway 
of its lumbering guns. We see the 
''Hollow Road of Ohain," that 
wide and fateful furrow of death, 
entomb the fortunes of earth's 
mightiest warrior, and, rich- 
watered with the blood of dead 
and dying Frenchmen, enfold the 
sad seed of St. Helena. 

O, for the pen of a Hugo, to 
write the story of that other 
Waterloo where the armies of 
Grant and Johnston met! 

(9) 




Like the first, it had its Blucher 
and its Grouchy, for, though Buell 
came. Van Dorn did not come. It 
had its timely cloud which flew 
the flag of the Union cause. It 
had its "Sunken Road,'' a de- 
ceptive, seeming track of chance 
which had waited, unsuspected, in 
its unmolested shadows, through 
many a year, for the fulfillment of 
its destiny. 

As some unknown pioneer of 
early Tennessee marked out that 
lonely highway by driving his rude 
wagon along the edge of the thick 
woods which the world now knows 
as the * 'Hornet's Nest" section of 
the Shiloh battlefield, little did he 
dream that he was breaking ground 
for the grave of the Southern Con- 
federacy. Far down the years 
from his forgotten and unevent- 
ful journey, that road, bitten by 
many a hoof and wheel, and 
washed by many a rain, held the 

(10) 



brave lines of Prentiss and Wallace 
within its protecting banks, while 
charge after charge of the victory- 
flushed lines of gray fainted upon 
its bloody brink. 

In presenting this brief com- 
mentary on the most fateful battle 
of our Civil War, it is not my pur- 
pose to invade the realm of the 
historian and usurp his tedious 
labors. Able pens have long since 
written the story of Shiloh — of its 
long marches, the clashes of its 
human lines, and every order 
which quickened or abated its 
tempest of death. Encomium has 
already given to its soldiers, the 
choicest flowers of love and grati- 
tude; and, though narrow-minded 
criticism has shot its poisoned 
arrows from side to side, there is 
unscathed glory enough for both 
the blue and the gray. When 
deeds are golden they need but the 
light of truth upon them to make 
them dazzle the world. 

(11) 




Following the footsteps of fate 
that led to this sad, ensanguined 
field, let us view, through the 
sobering lenses of fifty-seven years, 
the motives, deliberations, im- 
pulses and accidents which caused 
this great battle to be fought when 
and where it was; and, with the 
smoke all blown away, and the 
mists of tears lifted a little by the 
winds of time, let us endeavor to 
read its result to the brief, im- 
passioned fortunes of the Southern 
Confederacy. 

Into the story of Shiloh, widely 
differing opinions have woven con- 
troversies which I shall not herein 
attempt to settle. 

As to whether or not the Union 
army was surprised by the Con- 
federate attack — as to whether 
General Sherman was a pillar of 
strength against the Confederate 
onrush of the first day, as General 

(12) 



Grant has told us he was, or prac- 
tically adrift in the wreckage of 
the storm, as General Buell has 
described him — as to the cause of 
the belated arrival of General Lew 
Wallace — as to whether General 
Beauregard, in withdrawing his 
army from action on the evening 
of the first day, committed a 
blunder and forfeited victory, or 
obeyed the necessities of an ex- 
hausted army, I deem it proper to 
reserve my opinions. 

Rather let me swiftly unveil the 
great tragedy in its undisputed 
outlines, and bid you look upon 
its astounding array of immortal 
actors. 

In imagination, I invite you, the 
reader of this sketch, to leave the 
present hour, and the place in 
which you sit, and go back with 
me to the time and place of Shiloh. 

The day to which we have trans- 
ferred our minds is Sunday, April 

(13) 




sixth, eighteen hundred sixty-two, 
and, in spirit, we are above the 
earth, gifted with the mystic vision 
that holds not only the present, 
but both past and future within 
its dreamy scope. 

We are looking down on a re- 
mote and wooded landscape on 
the west bank of the Tennessee 
River, in Hardin County, Ten- 
nessee. In all its winding length of 
twelve hundred miles, this beauti- 
ful stream passes no more peaceful 
spot than was this place before 
these armies came to destroy its 
solitude forever, and place it on 
the map of the world. In aston- 
ishment, you speak to me, and ask : 
"Why should this tragedy of his- 
tory take place here, removed 
from all centers of population, and 
twenty miles from a railroad? 
What manner of vantage is this 
timbered plain? I see no citadel 

(14) 



~<^^ 



<ICH> 



of power to invite the jealous 
clash of mighty armies. Why- 
should these bannered legions come 
here to shoot the heart out of 
Nature and ravish with the can- 
non's roar, the thrush's sylvan 
song?" 

I can but answer that Shiloh is 
a chance stage of action. Grant's 
objective was Corinth, Miss., 
twenty miles away on the Memphis 
and Charleston Railroad, where he 
had expected to find and attack 
Johnston's army; and his troops 
had assembled here for the march 
against Corinth. 

The Tennessee River, gathering 
its waters from that wondrous 
country that raised up the heroes 
of Kings Mountain, and flowing 
by the unknown and unsung table 
land of Shiloh, volunteered a 
gleaming roadway to the trans- 
ports of Grant, and brought his 

(15) 



O' 



troops to this high bluff which is, 
for him, the gateway to history 
and to glory. 

The road which you see stretch- 
ing away from this landing to the 
Southwest, marks the highest and 
driest route to Corinth, from any 
point along the river. 

By his superior, General H. W. 
Halleck, who is stationed at St. 
Louis, General Grant has been 
ordered to delay the attack on 
Corinth until the arrival of Buell's 
army now marching from middle 
Tennessee to reenforce him. 

Divining the purpose of his ad- 
versary. General Johnston decided 
not to await the attack, but to 
become the aggressor — to move 
swiftly against the army of Grant, 
in the hope of crushing it before 
Buell could join him. 

From his headquarters in the 
Inge home, the veteran com- 
mander issued the order for the 

(16) 




SHELL-SCARRED WHITE OAK, SHILOH BATTLE FIELD, OVEJ 
SHADOWING THE SPOT WHERE GEN. ALBERT 
SIDNEY JOHNSTON FELL 



forward movement on the morning 
of April 3rd; and Corinth was 
delirious with hope and joy, as the 
music of drum and fife and piccolo 
floated on her languorous air, timing 
the eager tramp of the battle- 
bannered host. 

But beyond the spell of the 
music and the thrill of the march- 
ing, was the sad preparation for 
the grim results of the coming 
combat. While these buoyant 
troops were swinging out from the 
gates of Corinth, busy hammers 
were already falling in the making 
of five hundred coffins which the 
commander had ordered before he 
rode away; homes had been dis- 
posed for hospitals ; and physicians 
and nurses were silently waiting 
for the guns to begin. 

The weary march is over, and 
in the light of paling stars, we see 
the long gray lines, yet silent and 

(17) 



# 



still, over there to the Southwest, 
just three and one-half miles from 
this Landing, and only a little 
more than one mile beyond the 
sleeping lines of blue. 

^\ ND now, before those lines 
^^ close in their blighting em- 
brace, let us glance along their 
separate ranks and see what im- 
mortals are there. We can not 
enumerate the heroes, for every 
man of all the thousands is a hero. 
There is not a conscript in either 
army. Every soldier is a volunteer, 
and yet, in all the threatening 
scene, there is nothing of the 
aspect of the gathering mob, for 
the spirit and decorum of West 
Point are presiding there. 

Of the more than thirty Generals 
guiding the two hosts to the hour 
of fate, many are counted among 
the ablest products of the United 

(18) 




States Military Academy; many 
are veterans of the Mexican War, 
former classmates, friends and 
comrades, marching against each 
other with the best blood of the 
divided Nation behind them. 

First we look along the lines of 
blue. Beyond the battle field our 
vision encompasses the distant 
camp of Wallace's Third Division, 
the absent but hurrying columns 
of Buell, and the headquarters of 
the commander, eight miles away. 
It is difficult to believe that that 
plain, firm-jawed man, quartered 
in the quiet little village of Sa- 
vannah, Tennessee, is beginning 
an endless march into the fadeless 
light of history. He is not forty 
years old, and yet adversity has 
left its inevitable lines of sadness 
in his face, and he appears much 
older. Long before he shall reach 
fifty, he will be proclaimed the 

(19) 




savior of a Nation; and the 
crowned rulers of the old world will 
receive him in their palaces with 
all the pomp of earthly glory, for 
he is Ulysses S. Grant. 

Had his stage of action been set 
two thousand years ago, he would 
have been one of Plutarch's men. 

Yonder, close by the little log 
church called Shiloh, is W. T. 
Sherman, slender, grim and shrewd 
of countenance. His is the discern- 
ing vision that, e'er long, will look 
beyond the dictionaries of all lan- 
guages and find the truest defini- 
tion of War. 

Able, fearless, and superb, Don 
Carlos Buell looks like some knight 
of another century riding into the 
picture which our spirits behold. 

Five miles away is Lew Wallace; 
and we observe him with peculiar 
sadness, for his conduct of this day 
will involve him in a bitter and 



(20) 






lifelong controversy with his chief. 
But, regardless of the merits of 
that controversy — regardless of 
Shiloh, he is one of the country's 
immortals, and, looking down the 
years, we see the State of Indiana 
fix his image in marble, to stand 
as one of her two contributions to 
the Hall of Fame in the National 
Capitol. 

There are Prentiss and Mc- 
Clemand, and W. H. L. Wallace, 
and Crittenden and Lauman, and 
McCook and Nelson and Rousseau 
and Wood, conspicuous figures of 
the gathered and gathering host of 
blue. 

That mellow- voiced young Brig- 
adier of Ohio with the head of a 
statesman and the manner of a 
college professor, in nineteen years 
from this day will be President of 
the United States, for he is none 
other than James A. Garfield. 

(21) 




Behold the thick-lipped young 
officer not yet twenty-nine years 
of age, riding at the head of the 
Eleventh Illinois Cavalry — he of 
the strangely heavy features, but 
deep and soulful eyes that gather 
into his brain all the poetry of 
rivers, woods and fields. Though 
his insignificant part in this great 
battle will but claim a passing 
glance from the historian, in a 
little while he will be known as the 
Demosthenes of the nineteenth 
century, and his thoughts, clothed 
with incomparable beauty, will be 
printed in every language of the 
civilized world. He is Robert G. 
Ingersoll. 

Over there in the Thirtieth 
Indiana Infantry is a young Lieu- 
tenant of nineteen years, who will 
take no conspicuous laurels from 
this field, but long after this 
breach of the States shall have 

(22) 

• -1 



^D^ 



been healed, he will serve the 
Nation in places of distinction. 
Looking far down the coming 
years, we see him following old 
Geronimo through the wilds of 
Mexico. We see him at El Caney, 
and in the far away Philippines, 
where he is to die on the firing line 
beneath the stars and stripes. He 
is Henry W. Lawton. 

With the Twenty-fifth Ken- 
tucky is Benjamin H. Bristow, 
destined to be a conspicuous figure 
in the cabinet of a President, a 
pioneer in the yet distant fight 
against the power of the Trust. 

That brilliant young officer in 
the Twenty-fifth Indiana is John 
W. Foster, who, in the future 
diplomacy of the reunited Nation, 
will serve as Minister to three 
different countries. He, too, shall 
sit at the cabinet table of a Presi- 
dent, a diplomat and a statesman 
of influence and power. 

(23) '*"') 



cy 



Behind this wonderful array of 
leaders, but humble units mixed in 
the mingling mass of blue, are 
others yet unsung, who will leave 
their impress on the thought and 
action of the age. 

JVTOW turning our eyes to the 
^^ lines of gray, whom do we 
see marshaling the attacking host? 
They also belong to history. 

We look long and wonderingly 
at the tall, comely figure of Albert 
Sidney Johnston, for we know that 
he is in the sixtieth year of his life. 
He seems the spirit of youth 
crowned with gray. The story of 
his career to this climactic hour, 
reads like some romantic legend of 
the long ago. Indeed, his eventful 
life is a link between the old and 
the new civilizations. He is the 
senior among the great and active 
spirits now moving in the limelight 

(24) 




in our troubled and severed 
country. He is older than Abra- 
ham Lincoln, older than Jefferson 
Davis, older than Robert E. Lee. 
U. S. Grant was but a child of four 
years when Albert Sidney John- 
ston graduated at West Point. 
This gray commander of the gray 
host was a youth of twelve when 
the battle of Waterloo was fought, 
and was a student of the campaigns 
of the great Napoleon while that 
immortal was yet in the flesh. 
He has lived within the lifetime 
of every President from Washing- 
ton to Lincoln save Washington 
alone. Looking back to the days 
of his young manhood, we see 
him a brilliant and popular figure 
in the exclusive society of the 
National Capitol at that eventful 
time when the social and political 
life of the country revolved around 
the wills and wishes of such giants 
as Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Jack- 

(25) 




son, Benton and Everett. Re- 
fusing a proffered appointment to 
the staff of Winfield Scott at the 
age of twenty -three, we see him 
forego the luxury of Washington 
official life, and turn his face 
toward the wild frontier where 
hardships and dangers are the 
soldier's certain lot. We see him 
in that far away Indian expedition 
of 1827, when Black Hawk and 
Red Bird were captured, and again 
in the Black Hawk War of 1832, 
moving with the most rugged and 
dauntless characters of that rugged 
and glorious time. 

Looking along the years, we see 
him on a memorable occasion in 
the City of Louisville, listening 
with fired heart, to the great speech 
of Stephen F. Austin pleading the 
cause of Texas independence ; and 
then we see him riding away to 
that distant frontier of the South- 

(26) 






west fresh-stained with the blood 
that immortalized the Alamo and 
the field of San Jacinto. We see 
him enter the Texas army as a 
private soldier, and become its 
Commander-in-Chief, then Secre- 
tary of War in that wonderful 
Republic which was pressed from 
hearts of courage by the heel of 
Mexican tyranny. 

Another short lapse of time, and 
we find him in the storming line 
at Monterey. 

Still closer down the years, we 
see him in command of the Second 
U. S. Cavalry, that famous organi- 
zation which swept the Indian 
terror from hundreds of miles of 
the great Western border. 

But a little later, and he is 
leading the expedition to threaten- 
ing Utah, the Zion of the Mor- 
mons — triumphantly carrying the 
stars and stripes through the 
streets of Salt Lake City. 

(27) 



si 



To view him in his next post of 
duty, our visions leap away to 
California, where he is in command 
of the Department of the Pacific. 
The war cloud above the quarreling 
States is dark and low. He is 
opposed to secession, but Texas 
has spoken, and he resigns and 
makes the long journey to Rich- 
mond, where he is given the rank- 
ing active command in the South- 
ern Confederacy. 

Now we behold him in the 
searching spotlight of the first 
great war tragedy of America. 
Ke is the star of the gray actors, 
and in his supporting cast are men 
of illustrious records. 

There, by his side is Beauregard, 
who resigned the Superintendency 
of West Point to follow the for- 
tunes of Louisiana out of the 
Union; who directed the bom- 
bardment of Fort Sumpter and 

(28) 



commanded at Bull Run . His body 
bears scars of Mexican fury brought 
from the field of Chapultepec. 

With the foremost corps is 
William J. Hardee, for more than 
twenty years a brilliant figure in 
the military affairs of the country, 
former representative of the Gov- 
ernment in Europe in the study of 
cavalry methods, Commandant at 
West Point and author of the 
United States official text book on 
Infantry Drill and Tactics now 
being used by both Union and 
Confederate armies. 

The commander of the corps 
second in line is Braxton Bragg, a 
hero of the Seminole wars, a 
veteran of Monterey and Buena 
Vista. 

Commanding the corps next in 
line — that man of majestic person, 
bearing himself as if he were a 
Roman Senator stepped out of the 

(29) 





long ago — is Leonidas Polk, the 
great and beloved Bishop of the 
Southwest. 

Back yonder where the most 
distant line of gray rests across 
the Corinth road, a little more 
than four miles from the river, is 
the commander of Johnston's Re- 
serve Corps, for years the most 
dazzling and conspicuous figure of 
the political life of the South. He 
was a Congressman at thirty years 
of age, and Vice-President of the 
United States at thirty-five. He 
was the nominee of the pro- slavery 
party for President against Lin- 
coln; and he stepped from a seat 
in the United States Senate into 
the passion-swept road that led 
him to this battle field. He is 
John C. Breckinridge. 

Guiding the divisions and bri- 
gades of these four grand corps 
now crouching to spring, are 

(30) 



Cheatham and Clark and Ruggles 
and Withers and Hindman and 
Russell and Stewart and Bushrod 
Johnson and Stephens and Gibson 
and Anderson and Pond and Glad- 
den and Chalmers and John K. 
Jackson and Shaver and Cleburne 
and Wood and Trabue and Bowen 
and Statham ; there are Forrest 
and John Morgan, and Bate; 
and, mixed in the militant multi- 
tude are many yet unknown 
to fame who will sit in the high 
places of their States through 
trying years to come, to direct the 
thought of a sorely stricken people. 
From this vortex of destruction 
will emerge fire-tried souls, to 
become the counsellors, judges and 
statesmen of the Southland. 

T^O you see that little band of 
^^ blue-c 1 a d warriors stealing 
cautiously out from Prentiss' line 
to reconnoitre the suspicious front? 

(31) 



They are the Fingers of Destiny, 
feeling through the paling dark- 
ness of this death-charged dawn 
for the alarm that shall awaken 
the Union army to its impending 
danger. Whether led by judgment 
or chance, or guided by the will of 
the God of battles, they have gone 
straight to Hardee's picket line; 
they are now receiving that fateful 
volley which will sound through 
centuries announcing the opening 
of the Battle of Shiloh; and the 
hour is four fifty-five. 

The morning is coming bright 
and clear; the ground is soft from 
many rains; the forest is fresh- 
washed and timidly green. 

The gray host is rising from its 
anxious, fitful rest. Between the 
river and the rising lines of gray 
is the blue legion of Grant; and 
as the two armies quicken with the 

(32) 




BEAUTIFUL MONUMENT OF GRANITE AND BRONZE, SHILOH 
BATTLE FIELD, TO THE MEMORY OF IOWA SOLDIERS 



savage] instinct of battle, we s e e 
that Shiloh is to be the first grand 
combat of the continent of 
Liberty. 

How innocently these beardless, 
untaught soldiers are approaching 
each other; and what a tragedy! 
The average age of all these 
thousands is less than twenty 
years; and these smoothe-faced 
boys, gathered from the widely 
scattered homes of the North and 
of the South, where hearts are 
aching and breaking for them, 
know but little of the arts of 
defense and attack. Not a trench 
has been dug in all the battle 
plain; not an earth work has been 
thrown up; not a rifle pit has 
been sunk into the ground. With- 
out trick or shield, eighty thous- 
and men are seeking to destroy 
each other; and every man is a 
patriot. 

(33) 





The battle breaks with the break 
of day. The gray line is sweeping 
forward, though resisted and torn 
at every step. On, and on, and 
on it sweeps in a whirlwind of fire 
and death. The hour of twelve 
has struck, and the Union forces 
have been swept from half the 
field. The trend of the moving 
conflict is Northeastward, down 
and diagonally toward the river. 

From where Clanton's Cavalry 
hugs the river marshes on the 
Confederate right to where Whar- 
ton with his Texas Rangers, guards 
its left at the edge of the Owl 
Creek bottom, the unbroken length 
of this sweeping, bleeding, trium- 
phant line, is more than two miles. 

But along all the jagged front 
of the receding line of blue, no 
flag of truce is fluttering; and, as 
it gives ground, it is exacting from 
the advancing foe a terrible toll of 
blood. 

(34) 



Now all the fronts are clashing — 
center, right and left; and in the 
frenzy of the scene, we glimpse 
again the two Commanders: 

There is Grant, unshaken in the 
midst of his brave though melting 
lines. His face, like Bonaparte's, 
is a mask of granite ; and if there 
is aught in his soul save unyielding 
courage and confidence, no man 
may read it through that exterior 
of stone. With his columns crash- 
ing around him, and with his best 
and bravest commanders yielding 
inch by inch, no spirit of panic 
sets its yellow sign upon the 
serenity of his countenance. With 
the savage discord of a hundred 
hurricanes rolling by him, does he, 
as did that other man of granite, 
see '*the star of destiny?'' Is that 
mystic voice which comes only to 
the fated few, whispering to him 
through the fiery tumult, that 

(35) 




this day is but an incident — that 
through him, Appomattox MUST 
be? 

With BuelFs rushing columns 
yet far out of touch, and with 
Lew Wallace's sorely needed divi- 
sion still strangely absent, he 
placidly remarks to a member of 
his staff: "If I do not win to-day, 
I will win to-morrow.'' 

Yonder with the right wing of 
the gray line is Johnston, watching, 
directing and giving marvelous 
impulse to the flaming tide of 
victory wherever he touches it. 
Through the morning hours, we 
have seen him with Gladden and 
Shaver; then away to the left 
with Cleburne; then with Stew- 
art's Brigade shifting to the right. 
We saw him pause in the camp of 
the Eighteenth Wisconsin to direct 
the movements of Chalmers' and 
Jackson's Brigades to the extreme 



(36) 



LP 



right. He is calm, unaffected and 
serious. In issuing his clear and 
decisive orders for the hurling of 
his human machines of death, he 
seems almost gentle; and, though 
he is now within the bright focus 
of a thousand years to come, he 
does not mar the dignity of the 
picture with dramatic pose or 
spectacular gesture. Simplicity is 
the becoming mantle of his ma- 
jestic person. 

In the early hours of the conflict 
we saw him come upon a deserted 
camp of the enemy ; with a smile, 
he selected as his share of the 
**booty," a little new tin cup, re- 
marking that he might need it; 
and now, as he rides along the 
charging lines, we see him waving to 
the cheering soldiers, with his shin- 
ing trophy still in his uplifted hand. 

Now he is placing his Reserve 
Corps in position for what he 
hopes may be a decisive stroke; 

(37) 




and, with his staff around him, 
these all-important dispositions en- 
gage him for more than an hour. 

Just beyond the surging fronts, 
those hovering troops, with meas- 
ured and steady tramp, are wheel- 
ing and swinging into positions of 
vantage, whence he soon will call 
them to the thundering vortex. 

As we look with fascinated 
minds, upon this calm evolution of 
strategy in the very furnace of 
battle, a vagrant breeze rifts the 
smoke above an open field that 
almost touches the spot where the 
gray commander is placidly issuing 
his orders, and a sight of strange, 
uncanny beauty meets our eyes — 
a wide peach orchard in fullness of 
bloom, deserted by birds and bees 
that flew before the battle's breath, 
and kissed by cannon-smutted 
winds. 



(38) 






But pity not this blighted 
beauty, for, by their glorious death, 
these shivered trees shall wave 
immortal in the records of men, 
and these shattered blossoms will 
blow forever on the pages of 
history. 

Now the Confederate Reserve 
Corps is beginning to move. To 
the East of that wounded field of 
bloom the Brigade of Bowen is 
entering the zone of death, and as 
the gray Chief rides close behind, 
all the members of his staff are 
hurrying away to different parts 
of the field, each with some mes- 
sage vital to the purpose of the 
hour. That uncommon, fierce- 
eyed man, the last to leave him, is 
Isham G. Harris, the Governor of 
Tennessee; and as he gallops 
away to send the Brigade of 
Statham straight through the 
stricken orchard, General Johnston 



(39) 



0(9 



is alone. The place is one of 
beauty — a gentle knoll crested by 
a great oak reaching out its pecu- 
liarly horizontal arms in all di- 
rections, as if it would say to the 
world: *'Mark me well, for I am 
about to be the only witness to a 
tragedy." This calm watcher of 
his battle is alone in the cold eye 
of history — alone with the God of 
his destiny, and his life's work is 
done. 

It was his mission to bring to 
its highest pinnacle of hope, this 
new-born Nation of the South. 
That hope now moving on this 
gray and exultant tide, will never 
again, in all the bloody years to 
follow, reach the altitude of this 
hour; but the lone watcher will 
never know. At twenty-five 
minutes past two he proudly 
watches the swiftly moving troops 
of Statham, the blossoms of that 

(40) 

\ 



,>— -■ 



trembling orchard sifting down 
upon them like the painted snows 
of Fairy Land. 

At two-thirty a deadly bullet 
finds the fountain of his life. His 
last vision of earth rests upon his 
forward-marching columns ; the 
latest sounds that come to him 
are sounds of victory. He is dying ; 
he is dead. 

^HROUGH all its length the 
^^ gray line flinches, reels and 
shudders from the shock; then 
plunges forward again under the 
new leadership of Beauregard. Its 
right and left wings, swinging 
slowly around, are sweeping the 
Union forces into a concentrated 
zone of battle, but the Union 
center has become as marble, and 
the frenzied Confederates, hurling 
themselves against it, are rebound- 
ing as if they had been shot against 

(41) 




a cliff. That center is the ''Hornet's 
Nest," through which chance or 
God has carved that fateful 
''Sunken Road/' within whose 
banks the brave line of blue seems 
to have its back against some in- 
visible wall of fate. Again and 
again, and then again, these col- 
umns of the South carry their 
banner to the very brink of that 
road, only to reel and recoil, and 
go back in shattered fragments. 
It is plain to the Confederate 
Commanders that no human units 
can go through that line — that iron 
alone can meet and pierce that 
front. 

O, Muse of History, mark well 
this struggle on the soil of Tennes- 
see, for, if you write in truth, you 
must tell the world that, since 
men have slain each other on 
fields of strife, no braver, firmer 
line was ever held against a charg- 
ing foe; and that no sublimer 

(42) 




courage ever drove the breasts of 
men against an unyielding front! 
Mark, too, O writer of immortal 
records, that these, all, are 
Americans ! 

Back yonder,west of the Duncan 
field, just a little more than a 
quarter of a mile beyond that mill 
of death, under the direct orders of 
General Ruggles, all available Con- 
federate batteries are swiftly 
massing. Now sixty-two guns are 
playing on the '^Hornet's Nest" 
line. Great trees that have fought 
and whipped the storms of cen- 
turies are blasted with the quick- 
ness of a breath; the air is thick 
with falling limbs and flying twigs, 
and the troubled landscape booms 
with ceaseless thunders, as 
if all the lightnings of Heaven 
were convening within that tremb- 
ling forest. 

(43) 



That line has stood the hammer 
of concentrated fury until five 
o'clock has come and passed, but 
now, at last, it breaks and yields 
the ground which it has made im- 
mortal. The two wings of the 
attacking Confederates swing in 
like the closing jaws of an iron 
pincers, and two thousand Union 
prisoners, including the indomi- 
table Prentiss, lay down their arms. 

But, bristling beyond are other 
lines of blue, and both sides fight 
on until they stick their bayonets 
into the evening twilight. 

As the torn and bleeding units 
of the Union forces fall back with 
their ever receding and battered 
front which they have defended 
from the rising to the setting of 
the sun, a new line is being formed 
for a final resistance. As the 
shadows deepen, this last new line 
of this bloody day rests its left 

(44) 




against the bank of the river at 
Pittsburg Landing, and stretches 
westward to the Savannah road. 

Before this last grim line lies 
its battle field, littered with the 
wrecks of its guns, and made 
gruesome by the bodies of its 
dead and dying, mixed and crossed 
with the dead and dying of its foes; 
back of it are the river and the im- 
passable swamps, but with it and 
of it is the spirit of Grant, and 
so it stands at bay to meet what- 
ever may come. 

Less than half a mile away, the 
oncoming Confederate line 
stretches a threatening arc of 
danger westward from the river to 
the Corinth road, and on beyond 
the Savannah road, overlapping 
the western extremity of the Union 
line. 

Could the eyes of all the people 
of the great North, at this critical 

(45) 




moment, look upon this scene, 
their hearts would beat with 
anxiety for the impending issue. 

Such moments are condensed 
ages from which Fate, the master 
player, draws the unexpected cards 
that trump the dreams of Nations, 
and win away the fairest hopes of 
men. 

While the broken but rallying 
columns of Grant are steadying 
their fire-wrought nerves to meet 
the final onset of their flushed and 
eager foe, there is an unexpected 
pause in the line of gray as, from 
unit to unit, an order from the 
commander is flying — an order 
that will set an eternal question 
upon the lips of the future — an 
order to retire for the night. 

As the gray line is suddenly 
drawn away, and the two sore 
and sullen armies begin the long 
vigil of the restless night, we look 

(46) 



^D^ 



upon a carnival of agony such as 
can come only to a battle field — 
the silent faces of thousands of 
men dead, yet destined to live 
forever in the grateful affections 
of their people; the sufferings 
of the wounded, and all the at- 
tendant horrors of the surgeon's 
ghastly work. 

Down there by that little cabin 
at the river's brink, the severed 
arms and legs of soldiers are 
stacked like cord-wood; and this 
half-green land which, but yester- 
day was bright with wild flowers 
and sweet with song, is mantled 
with gloom and crowned with 
sorrow. 

And now, as if to confuse con- 
fusion, a storm is descending upon 
the stricken field. The lightnings 
hold aloft their flickering candles, 
revealing in fitful flashes, the 
groaning terror which the pitying 

(47) 



Night had sought to hide beneath 
its cloak of darkness. The voice 
of thunder rolls madly through 
the upper deeps, as if the war 
passions of the North and the South 
had leaped from the face of the 
earth, and were scolding each 
other through the lips of the storm. 
While the weary commanders 
await the fortunes of the uncertain 
tomorrow, the army of Buell and 
the troops of Wallace swell the 
blue line with more than twenty 
thousand fresh soldiers. 

A NOTHER morning dawns, 
^^ and all the fronts are changed. 
The gray and threatening column 
which pressed against the river's 
edge in the falling darkness of 
yesterday, now lies far back in the 
center of the field, while the eager 
line of blue, fronted with Buell 
and winged with Wallace, is mov- 

(48) 




ing to the attack. Again the 
conflict rages; again the **Hornet's 
Nest,'' the ^Teach Orchard," and 
all those trampled fields and 
splintered woods are wrapped in 
flame and tuned with battle 
thunder, as the living fight above 
the dead ; again this ravaged land- 
scape is being graved with the 
sword and etched with flashing 
guns, upon the pages of history. 

We see the sorely wounded line 
of gray pushed back step by step 
until it loses the field and begins 
its melancholy march back to 
Corinth whence it came — Corinth, 
beautiful type of the town of the 
old South, the South that soon 
must pass away. How calm in its 
grief is this place of beauty and 
of sorrow! Already holding in its 
stricken heart, the body of its 
dead chief, it now must open its gates 
to receive this defeated host which 
so recently marched through its 
streets with flying banners. 

(49) 




Looking down on those streets 
from our seat in the clouds, we 
fathom the depths of the un- 
speakable misery of war. On every 
available house the hospital flags 
are flying ; mutilated and suffering 
men, drenched by the storm, are 
being hurried in to the waiting 
couches ; couriers are arriving, and 
news of the growing disaster is 
spreading from group to group 
like a sickening contagion. 

Almost in front of the Inge 
home, now badged with mourning, 
the two thousand Union prisoners 
are waiting, under guard; and 
down the steps of that home, 
comes a little group of men with 
bowed heads, bearing the body of 
the dead chief resting in a plain 
pine coffin completely covered with 
battle flags. It is placed on a 
caisson and drawn through the 
mass of prisoners, to a waiting 
train, to be carried to New Orleans. 

(50) 




As the vanquished army trudges 
away from its lost field, our eyes 
return to the mournful desolation 
of Shiloh. Down yonder in the 
cannon-plowed fields, and in the 
scorched and tattered woods, 
thirty-six hundred Americans have 
died — twenty thousand Americans 
have given of their blood. 

With unfettered visions, our 
eyes sweep the whole country as 
millions of people hang, breathless, 
on the result of this battle which 
may mean union or disunion. We 
glimpse the gloom of Richmond 
and the anxiety of Washington. 
We have not the heart to look in 
at the homes of the twenty-one 
States that sent troops into this 
struggle. 

Looking away to the country of 
the great lakes, we see one of the 
world's immortals pursuing the 
humble trade of a newsboy and 

(51) 




performing his first act of genius 
in spreading the tidings of Shiloh. 
He is but a boy of fifteen running 
on the Grand Trunk Railway be- 
tween Detroit and Port Huron, 
Michigan; but because we know 
that his name will shine further 
down the ages than any man now 
living, we observe him with deepest 
fascination. Standing in front of 
the bulletin board of the Detroit 
Free Press and reading the start- 
ling news of the battle, exaggerated 
to sixty thousand killed and 
wounded it comes to his keen and 
luminous brain, that if the same 
excitement prevails along his route, 
there will be opportunity for an 
unprecedented sale of papers, if 
he can but get some inkling of the 
news telegraphed ahead. Going 
to the operator in the depot, he 
gives him Harper's Weekly and 
some other papers for three months 
upon his agreement to telegraph 

(52) 



the stations the substance of the 
matter on the bulletin board. 
Conceiving the idea that he can 
sell a thousand papers, he counts 
his money, and finds that he has 
only enough to buy three hundred. 
Venturing into the forbidding sanc- 
tum of the editor, he states his 
plan, and asks the two men present 
for credit. One refuses ; the other 
intercedes; the deal is closed, and, 
with the assistance of another boy, 
he lugs the thousand papers to 
the train. Already the operators 
at all the stations are marking up 
the headlines of the tragic news; 
already the town of Corinth, the 
woods of Shiloh and the road that 
lies between them, belong to the 
world. Never again will the soft 
shadows of seclusion rest upon 
them, for the spot-light of history 
will cast upon them an eternal ray. 

At Utica, the first stop, the 
newsboy sells thirty-five papers; 

(53) 




at Mount Clemens the crowd 
surges in a living mass to reach 
him, and the price of papers goes 
to ten cents; all along the way 
this is repeated; at Port Huron, 
the waiting crowd comes like an 
avalanche; the price of papers 
soars to twenty-five cents; every 
copy is sold, and the first serious 
experiment of this incomparable 
genius is crowned with success. 

But who is he, that we should 
so long dwell upon his connection 
with the sad story of Shiloh? 
Even as this battle is of the life 
and transcendent purpose of this 
Republic, so is this yet unknown 
boy. In the infinite realm of in- 
vention, he will be king, and the 
ages will bring none to claim his 
throne. Nature will whisper to 
him so softly that others will not 
hear, and his wondrous mind will 
sense her finest secrets. He will 



(54) 






intercept the soul of light and 
make it the servant of mankind; 
he will imprison the spirit of song 
in a cell of wax, that one century 
may sing to another; he will 
transfix and hold upon a needle's 
point, the notes of birds, the 
laughter of children, the melody 
and the wisdom of orators. To 
the stage of the theatre he will 
bring the action of the world, and 
within the narrow limits of a little 
room, the streets of cities will teem 
with life, great rivers will cast their 
foaming falls, and all the oceans 
will roll their shifting tides. By 
his will and work, the generations 
of the future may bring into their 
drawing-rooms the beauty and the 
music and the wildness of the 
earth. Within the warmth of 
glowing firesides, adventurous ex- 
plorers will scale the peaks of the 
frozen Alps; wild creatures will 
pace their native jungles, and 



(55) 



^ 



cy 



deserts will stretch their endless 
wastes, alive with moving cara- 
vans. 

Light and Sound and Motion, 
the angels of his fame, will fly 
with his name through all the 
world. 

He is Thomas A. Edison. 

AS the curtain falls on this vast 
stage of human grief and 
glory, we may truly say that no 
tragedy of earth was ever played 
by a greater cast of characters, nor 
with scenes more grandly set — 
foot-lights of flashing guns ; wings 
of living trees; background of 
flowing waters and gray- green hills; 
restless, shifting dome of stars 
and sun and storm; spot-lights of 
lightning; music of thunder ; audi- 
ence, millions of people ! 

And now, my reader — ^you who 
have sat with me upon a cloud of 

(56) 




fancy while we have played that 
we were spirits — you have per- 
mitted me to ignore the march of 
time and to transcend the limits 
of the senses. Under the spell of 
what our souls have witnessed, I 
have spoken to you, in the present 
tense, of events long gone. I have 
done so in order that I might 
unveil to you a living vision of this 
great tragedy, instead of telling 
to you a story that is old. 

Together, we have seen a hun- 
dred thousand men hold each 
other in the embrace of death 
from the rising to the setting of 
two suns, while there passed be- 
fore us, through that field of fire, 
the immortals of Shiloh. Over by 
that blossoming orchard we saw 
the eventful career of Albert Sidney 
Johnston come to its end. In the 
"double shadow of night and 
death,'' we saw the chameleon 

(57) 




tide of victory change from gray 
to blue; and, in the thunder of 
the guns that closed the dreadful 
scene, we saw Grant begin his 
long march to Appomattox, and 
Sherman set out for **the sea." 

Now, I invite you to descend 
with me from our cloud of fancy — 
to come back to now, and remem- 
ber that fifty-seven merciful years 
lie between us and that harrowing 
drama which we have witnessed 
through the wonderful glasses of 
imagination. 

Looking backward through those 
years we may now read the tre- 
m e n d o u s consequences of this 
battle; for it was here that the 
real frontier of the South was 
broken. It was here that Destiny 
which is but the will of God, be- 
gan the execution of plans then so 
veiled, yet now so plain. 

While the brilliant star of Albert 
Sidney Johnston was sinking in 
death, leaving his people in a mist 

(58) 




of tears, there arose another star 
out of the smoke of Shiloh — a star 
destined to shed its rays far down 
the reaches of time — the slow- 
moving, yet imperturbable and 
ever ascendent genius of Ulysses 
S. Grant. 

It matters not that these two 
extraordinary men opposed each 
other here. Each was a great 
American, wielding the battle arm 
of his people, and fearlessly baring 
his own life to the storm of wrath 
which fate had cast upon our 
severed country. 

I believe that the best and 
truest American of to-day is the 
man who can, with most sincerity, 
and with greatest freedom of mind 
and heart, pity the sufferings, laud 
the courage, and honor the memory 
of every soldier who fought on both 
sides of that war. 

(59) 



ft 



As we review the sorrow of it 
all, let us believe that the God of 
Battles never permits so great a 
tragedy to pass without its com- 
pensations and rewards to civiliza- 
tion, however terrible may be the 
price which the people of the hour 
are required to pay. In the glare of 
the leaping fires of passion which 
lighted this continent for four 
long years, the Nations of the earth 
saw the muscles of American 
power; and I believe that the 
conviction sank deep into the 
composite mind of mankind that 
this free Republic, God-fearing, 
peace-loving, slow to anger, is never- 
theless, unconquerable and eternal. 

The fifty-seven years that have 
passed over the field of Shiloh 
have but brightened its place on 
the map of the world. 

Embraced in a great National 
Military Park, this sacred ground 
without change of contour, and 

(60) 






bearing everlasting marks of the 
tragedy which it staged, is holding 
up its glorious page of history to 
the thousands who come to trace 
the charges and counter charges of 
its long vanished armies. 

Woven into the beauty which 
Nature has given to this land, is 
the story of the great conflict. 
That story which bears no word of 
dishonor for either side, is written 
on tablets of iron, shadowed by 
scarred and veteran trees, sung to 
by the sighing voice of a great 
river, and by the softer, sweeter 
voices of little springs that have 
paused not nor hushed their whis- 
perings in all the years that have 
followed since patriots fought and 
died along their mossy banks. 

JIN memory of all the blue, and 
•*'• of all the gray, our great Gov- 
ernment has caressed this spot of 

<6I) 




land with loving touch, and beauty 
has sprung from the footprints of 
horror. 

These roads, once rutted by the 
wheels of wrath, now bend and 
curve through peaceful shadows, 
leading the way to the sacred 
places of vanished battle lines. On 
hill and knoll the guns of Shiloh 
still are standing. Their harmless 
muzzles, now prisoned in the 
spider's gentle chains, are leveled 
on phantom ranks of men; and 
gracing all the quiet scene, are the 
monuments of the North and of the 
South, the crystallized sentiments 
of loving peoples — the bronze and 
granite guards of impartial history. 

What a tribute it is to our 
country, and to our civilization, 
that the living remnants of the 
armies that fought here so des- 
perately, can return together in 
peace, and look upon this field as 
the joint heritage of their glory! 

(62) 



This could not be with any other 
people. It could not have been 
in any other time. The veteran 
soldiers of Wellington and the 
equally brave remnant of Napo- 
leon's shattered army, could not 
have gone back together to the 
field of Waterloo, to fraternize 
above the dust of their fallen 
comrades. 

But there is a perfectly human 
reason why this is so. The spirits 
of greed and murder did not march 
with the Shiloh armies. They 
fought, not for the glory of kings, 
nor for the conquest of lands, but 
for convictions as sacred as their 
blood. They fought only on the 
battle field, and committed no 
crimes against humanity, to stand 
against the day of peace and re- 
union. 

As we greet the tottering few 
who still survive that storm, let 
us unite with them in honoring all 



(63) 



-^ 



ry 



the soldiers who perished here. 
Who knows but that their spirits 
reunited in love and peace eternal, 
are sensible of our every word and 
thought? Who knows but that their 
shadowy touch, sweeping the cords 
of our hearts, is setting into vibra- 
tion those mystic, soundless har- 
monies that subdue and dominate 
the passions of men? 

But even if this be not so ; if all 
that is left to us is measured by 
these heaps of dust that long have 
slumbered here — if all the souls 
that flew from out the lips of death 
on this sad field, have gone too far 
beyond the zones of wars, too far 
beyond the realm of hate and 
strife to hear our petty plaudits 
of their deeds, still let us conse- 
crate the places where they fell, 
and bid our sorrowing memories 
hold their sacrifices in everlasting 
gratitude. 

(64) 











'■if^^k 










iS™r°^^°^GREs 




°°^3 70^370 8 ^ 



